Delete your old tweets

Wipe your tweets

"""
Delete your old tweets (by old I mean all except latest 100) 
without removing favorites of your own tweets and DM.

1/ Install python-twitter: http://code.google.com/p/python-twitter/ as ptwitter
2/ Patch it with http://code.google.com/p/python-twitter/issues/detail?id=60
3/ Populates USERNAME and PASSWORD

Note that you're limited to 150 calls to the API per hour and that you can't 
retrieve more than the 3200 latest tweets, it means that even if you relaunch
the script a lot of times you'll be screwed if you've got more that 
3200 favorites of your own tweets.

Thanks to @Pierce_D and @brutasse, I'll rewrite the end of the script
given those recent info.
"""
import time
from sets import Set
from ptwitter import twitter

USERNAME = 'foo'
PASSWORD = 'bar'

api = twitter.Api(username=USERNAME, password=PASSWORD)
public_api = twitter.Api()

## retrieve all favs
def get_favorites_ids(user):
    """
    Retrieve all favorites ids for the given user.
    """
    favorites_ids = []
    favs_len = 0
    for i in range(100):
        favorites_ids += [status.id for status in public_api.GetFavorites(user=user, page=i)]
        print i, favorites_ids, len(favorites_ids)
        if favs_len == len(favorites_ids):
            break
        else:
            favs_len = len(favorites_ids)
            # wait a bit, throttled api
            time.sleep(1)
    return favorites_ids


favorites_ids = get_favorites_ids(user=USERNAME)
# You can cache the result if you plan multiple launches
#favorites_ids = ['result of get_favorites_ids']

# retrieve tweets to delete
def get_all_tweets_ids(user):
    """
    Retrieve all tweets ids for a given user, except the latest 100 (first page).
    """
    tweets_ids = []
    tweets_len = 0
    for i in range(9, 18):
        tweets_ids += [status.id for status in public_api.GetUserTimeline(screen_name=user, page=i+1, count=100)]
        print i, tweets_ids, len(tweets_ids)
        if tweets_len == len(tweets_ids):
            break
        else:
            tweets_len = len(tweets_ids)
            # wait a bit, throttled api
            time.sleep(1)
    return tweets_ids
    
tweets_ids = get_all_tweets_ids(USERNAME)
# cache
#tweets_ids = ['result of get_all_tweets_ids']

# because twitter api is unstable, really
tweets_already_done = ['printed ids deleted']

tweets_todelete_ids = list(Set(tweets_ids)-Set(favorites_ids)-Set(tweets_already_done))
print len(tweets_todelete_ids)

# delete tweets
for tweet_id in tweets_todelete_ids[::-1]:
    # verify
    #print public_api.GetStatus(tweet_id).text
    # delete
    status = api.DestroyStatus(tweet_id)
    print tweet_id
    # wait a bit, throttled api
    time.sleep(1)

starting from June, 30th, you won't be able to log into the Twitter API this way. You'll have to use OAuth.

http://apiwiki.twitter.com/OAuth-FAQ

You're absolutely right :/

To link threads :) Python wrapper using OAuth http://code.google.com/p/python-twitter/

Checks https://github.com/olivierthereaux/oldtweets for a maintained version of the script.